For Teachers

Welcome to "Historic Maps in K-12 Classrooms." In order to help make the best use of this site, we strongly recommend that you read this guide for teachers before using the site in your classroom. For optimal use of this site, please make sure that your system meets the technical specifications outlined in the First Time Users page.

"Historic Maps in K-12 Classrooms" has been prepared by the staff of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library. We hope that this site will help teachers at all grade levels make effective use of historic map documents in their classrooms to help students with their map reading skills and to foster a greater appreciation of the geographical dimensions of American history. The site has been designed specifically to support basic map and information acquisition skills at the K-2 levels and social studies, history, or geography teaching at other levels. We hope, however, that it will prove useful to teachers of other subjects, such as science and art.

General Organization and Use of the Site

  • General Organization: Content and organization of the modules and of this site
  • Using the Lesson Plans: Division of grades levels, degree of difficulty
  • About the Glossary

National Standards for Geography and Social Studies

Displaying and Printing Supplied Images and Texts

  • Displaying core maps and supplemental images and texts (includes how to zoom in and out of and pan around on core map images)
  • Printing core maps and supplemental images and texts
  • Exporting images and texts
Reading Historic Maps and General Resources on Cartography
  • How to Read Historic Maps
  • Map Analysis Worksheet
  • Bibliography
  • Additional Resources
Permissions and Fair Use

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